Poor Danny Cohen. You relaunch a whole channel, announce new and exciting ways of sowing your televisual seed all over the internet and spreading fashionable and tasty internet jam all over your television, you tie ribbons in the hair of all your existing concepts, and bells to the ankles of your new ones - and all anyone wants to talk about is that little orange aliens won't be appearing in the gaps between your programmes any more.

The demise of BBC3's blobs has been widely met with dismay; mourned by approximately 27 times more people than you ever suspected watched the channel itself. They have remained the most constant thing about the channel since it launched five years ago, constantly changing to represent the programme or season. And while they may not fit the multi-platform, whizz-bang, net-encompassing image that the channel is so desperate to adopt, they are (or were) an immediately recognisable (and, frankly, adorable) face of the brand.

But now, without their nightly continuity regime to keep them in amusing plasticine hats, what future career in the media can the tiny Aardman invertebrates hope for? Perhaps their own series, although some might argue they haven't manage to break out as characters enough for a cohesive plot. Perhaps they'll be sent to the channel-branding hall of fame. Or perhaps, like a cheeky simian before them, they may even outlive the channel itself.

ITV's monkey

Pretty much the greatest contribution bestowed on the world in general by the defunct ITV Digital. Or, in fact, the only contribution. Monkey - usually pronounced "munkeh!" - is a cheeky woolly sock puppet with cold, dead button eyes and a weary attitude to sidekick Johnny Vegas. When the pair started, the one made out of polyester yarn was understandably believed to be the sidekick. But after ITV sent out collectable little Monkey dolls to new subscribers rather than chubby little rubber Johnnys, that relationship reversed, and the real, human, professional comedian became second fiddle to a sock with someone's hand up his bottom. Now, five years after the remaining dregs of ITV Digital were flushed away - with over-priced collector's versions of the toy and guest appearances at charity events packed in between - the partnership has returned, albeit with a completely different product.

Max Headroom

In 1984, a real man in a latex mask pretending to be a computer-generated man with a silly haircut took over the world. Or at least took over a music video show on Channel 4. Immediately popular, particularly with people who, presuming that we had passed 1983 and therefore were officially living in the future, thought that this was, in fact, a real, sentient computer-generated man. It wasn't, of course. It was actor Matt Frewer in a slip-on head. With his stuttering delivery, bad puns and hypnotic background, Headroom became a star far beyond music video continuity - succeeding in not only getting his own movie, but a whole US TV series of his own. Max is now being brought back to C4 to smooth viewers' transition to digital.

The Drumming Gorilla

Cadbury might argue that the image of a gorilla playing the drums has helped increase the public appetite for Dairy Milk, but the popular belief remains that all their incredibly popular 2007 campaign really provoked was the public's appetite for gorillas playing the drums. And Phil Collins. After a year of food safety investigations, product recalls and a growing awareness of obesity concerns in the press, Cadbury came up with a largely viral marketing campaign orchestrated by Fallon London which managed not to feature chocolate, or anything chocolate-related, at all. Years from now, the YouTube archaeologists will still be talking about the phenomenon of The Gorilla That Drummed. Whether they'll have any idea what it was advertising, however, is a different matter.

Charlie Says

"Eaeaa Oowr, Eeear Ow Oarrrr," said a little ginger animated cat to his owner. "Charlie says that if ever you see a box of matches lying around tell mummy because they can hurt you,", said the little boy. "No he didn't, you tiny fool," shouted the children of the world. "He said eaeea oowr eeear ow, woowr." Through the wise cat and his child-translation engine, children of the 70s were told various things about how to not die/get abducted/burn down the house while mummy wasn't looking. The campaign proved such a hit that, decades later, samples were taken from the films for dance music, and DVDs of the collected films continue to sell.

Creature Comforts

More than 15 years after their first campaign, people still talk about the Creature Comforts. "Ah, remember those lovely gas adverts?" they say. "British Gas, was it?" say most people. Sadly, it wasn't. It was for electricity. Still, like the orange blobs, the Creature Comforts animations were created by Aardman, and managed to bring a certain warmth to the brand, no matter what that brand turned out to have been.

Flat Eric

Perhaps one of the first big advert-to-internet phenomena, Flat Eric - a puppet created, like Monkey, by the Jim Henson Workshop - moved seamlessly from a denim advert to rabid fansites all over the web. It was difficult to tell what people liked so much about Eric: his mellow, yellow fuzziness; his relaxed head, bobbing to the beat of a slow moving car in the manner of a small yellow gangster; or just the fact that as a hand-puppet with, consequently, no useful legs to speak of, he would never be able to utilise the product he did so much to promote.